Black Bullet – 13

It looked like Satomi-leader had a steep hill to climb in order to defeat Aldebaran and end the Gastrea threat, but we were surprised to find that the final Gastrea battle only occupied the first half of the episode; the rest was for character stuff of a very specific and also surprising nature. That said, the first half battle didn’t feel rushed at all; it felt focused and efficient, yet epic and cinematic. The lanterns were a nice touch, too.

The battle could have been even quicker still, but for a little hiccup with the Miori-supplied bomb that fails to detonate, a nice little “uh-oh” moment that even had us questioning whether Miori meant for it to not go off. Rentaro decides to knock out Enju and detonate the bomb at point-blank range, which he knows will kill him but he goes anyway, because giving his life to protect others is the very thing he’s lived for.

Destiny wasn’t ready to let Rentaro bow out of the mortal coil just yet though, as Aldebaran hits him Varanium-corroding fog that destroys his leg. The necessary sacrifice falls to his mentor Shouma, whom he’d just reunited with, but who also wants to bury the dark powers he’s learned along with Aldebaran. As he sees it, his life is a small price to pay to eliminate both evils. So, who will be Asaka’s promoter now? Yeah…the show forgot about her.

That’s okay though, because for much of the balance of the episode casts a laser focus on Tendo Kisara, Rentaro’s boss would-be girlfriend. Specifically, she wastes no time taking her brother Kazumitsu to task for building Monolith 32 with substandard materials and pocketing the savings. By “taking to task” we mean “challenging him to a duel he has no business accepting. She takes one of his legs, and he gives her information about whom to target next.

Everyone thinks Kisara is sparing his life, but her second strike was on a delay, and he literally explodes in a gory, horrific mess. Kisara giddily embraces Rentaro afterwards, pleased with what she’s done. When he recoils at the crazy, she admits he’ll never be able to truly “touch evil”, and that his justice was never any match for the evil he’s up against. No, to her, only a greater evil can defeat evil, and if that means she has to cast away her soul and happiness—and that Rentaro becomes her enemy—so be it.

I’ll be honest; Kisara’s fall is quite extreme and a lot to take in, especially so close to the end of the show, but I liked the shocking suddenness of it, especially since we’ve seen how much suffering and death was caused by the people who Kisara wants to kill. This darkness was always growing in her, and she finally let it out. Still, since there’s no time to explore it further, it’s more like a preface to an arc that never was, ending in an ellipsis.

The final scene of the show has Rentaro and Enju alone on a train, headed to a ceremony where they’ll be patted on the back for their service. With the city safe from Gastrea—once more, thanks to Enju’s kind—things seem to be looking up, but Kisara’s new path is certainly unsettling. And even though Enju pledges they’ll be together forever, both Rentaro and we know she’s already on borrowed time. Neither entirely happy or sad, this ending was…cautiously optimistic.

Final Cumulative Score: 7.85
MAL Score: 7.77

Stray Observations:

• Kagetane’s role in this episode is limited to a couple one-liners. Shame.
• Yasuwaki does not reappear. GOOD. Fuck that guy.
• Building 300m (984 feet) of monolith in two days? Yeah, I’m no engineer, but even with slave labor, that’s just not happening.
• Kisara walking barefoot through her brother’s blood…yikes!
• Well, if there’s ever a Black Bullet 2, you can expect Kisara to be an enemy and for Enju to either turn into a Gastrea, die, or be saved but lose her powers, which is probably the most preferable choice for her well-being.
• This is the final RABUJOI review of Spring 2014. Thanks for watching and reading, everybody.

 

 

Black Bullet – 12

While I wouldn’t exactly say Gado was unfit for command, one can’t deny that his decisions he made led to costly defeats. But even if there was no way he could have predicted the events that would follow it, one of his last acts as commander may have been his best: sending Rentaro off to defeat Pleiades rather than executing him.

Rentaro’s unusual sentence leads to him running into Kagetane and Kohina, and they collectively have the strength to take out a weakened Pleiades all by themselves, opening Aldeberan open to airstrikes that force him back for at least another few hours. Rentaro returns to camp to learn Gado is dead, and as the next-highest ranked promoter (due to all his past victories in this show), he is the new commander.

Before that sinks in, Rentaro visits Shouma’s injured partner Midori, whose corruption level is reaching critical. He has a chance to take her out while she’s still human, but he can’t do it, but she manages to sneak away and do it herself. Midori was only a wisp of character, but her scene with Rentaro has a quiet, sad weight to it. Having Gado’s initiator Asaka pair up with Shouma was also a neat development, even if, again, Asaka is barely a character.

After that, Rentaro takes the reins of the remaining forces and yanks tight, suffering no objections. When someone suggests they cut and run, Rentaro cuts him with his sword; he explains his ruthlessness as an effort to make his men fear him more than they fear the Gastrea. It helps when Miori arrives with some primo Shiba Brand weaponry and a plan to take out Aldebaran so he won’t come back.

In another moving scene, Enju asks Rentaro why so many people hate the cursed children so much, and whether being in the civil service is just a means of thinning their ranks. Assuring her like the big brother he is, Rentaro says he became a civil officer to risk his life to save people. The people they’re saving can’t be judged if they’re devoured by the Gastrea, so he’ll keep fighting to save them now, and worry about whether they were worthy of saving later.

Stray Observations:

• Pleiades and Aldebaran bellow like whales, but they’re also not that fearsome…like whales. The CGI-to-regular animation transitions were pretty jarring, too.
• “Papa, can I cut them?”…”You may kill half of them.” What a great dad! I really missed these two.
• Midori also mentions a “darkness” that could consume Kisara unless Rentaro keeps her close. Sure enough, she promises him she’ll always be by his side, no matter how ruthless he gets.
• Thankfully the Kisara-Midori rivalry doesn’t rear its annoying head; too much shit to do!
• Midori’s demise reinforced something that’s been hanging over the show’s head for some time: Enju’s also perilously close to crossing the red line of corruption. Will that come into play in the finale? That would be rather sadistic of the show…
• Oh God, that insuffrable lickspittle Yasuwaki is back and has something planned for Rentaro. Can’t this punk go die a horrible death already?